Comedian, Unbookable

Register Guard Story

Bob Keefer from The Register-Guard – Here’s one version of the story you’re about to read: Eugene stand-up comic Andy Andrist heads for Florida last fall and does an videotaped ambush interview with the man who molested him three decades ago. The comic plans to put the resulting video online on Super Bowl Sunday.

The man, says Andrist, admits on tape to being a child molester. Here’s a completely different version of the same story: Andrist, a foul-mouthed, hard-drinking comic who is known for outrageous video stunts, heads to Florida with two other comics to extort a car — or is it money? — from a man who was a friend of Andrist’s family in California more than 30 years ago. The man — who did not respond to an interview request through his lawyer — absolutely denies being a child molester, the lawyer says. Which story is fiction and which is true is the subject of a slander and defamation lawsuit filed in a Florida court in December by the man who Andrist claims molested him.

Here are some facts not in dispute. Andrist and two comic friends — Eugene comedian and videographer Chris Castles and Bisbee, Ariz., stand-up comic Doug Stanhope — went to Port St. Lucie, Fla., in November to confront a man Andrist claims molested him three decades ago in California. When they arrived, Stanhope — who self-published a book in 2006 titled “Fun With Pedophiles: The Best of Baiting” — telephoned the man, pretending to be a private investigator who wanted to discuss sensitive knowledge about the man’s college-age daughter. He asked the man to meet him outdoors at a hotel. The man — we’re not identifying him here, given the slender evidence against him — showed up for the meeting with his wife and a sheriff’s deputy in tow.